The American West is more than history; it’s myth: from wild frontier adventure to Tinseltown glitz, the West has fed America’s imagination, including that of legendary comics creator Howard Chaykin. Century West, the new Image Comics graphic novel out in September, is his ode to the West and the origins of the modern world.

Century West follows the life of Century, Texas, from sleepy settlement to twentieth-century boomtown, and three men on whom the change has a profound effect. The three men are all settlers from the east who establish themselves as Texas Rangers, becoming an indelible part of the story of the American West.

The story has been in Chaykin’s concept book since the early 1990s. It’s a narrative demonstration of his conviction that the modern world began a lot earlier than any of the mid-20th-century types ever knew, and the movies were what made that modernity concrete, inviolable and inevitabl. Plus of course, it’s got cowboys, Indians, airplanes and a Passover seder. What more could you ask for?

Originally created for Disney Italia, Century West has been published in Spanish and English, and September’s Image Comics edition (ISBN 978-1-60706-788-7) is the first time the 64-page graphic novel will appear in English. It can be pre-ordered now from the July issue of Previews.